Former UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman is taking issue with how quickly MMA fans can turn on fighters.
Usman (20-4 MMA, 15-3 UFC) is in unfamiliar territory, having lost three straight bouts – two title fights against Leon Edwards and one last-minute middleweight bout against Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 294.
Before his three-fight losing streak, Usman had gone more than nine years unbeaten and had defended his title five times, and he compared his current form to former champions Israel Adesanya and Alexander Volkanovski, saying people have already forgotten what they’ve achieved.
“For a long time, I just kept entertaining. That was important to me,” Usman said on the “Weighing In” podcast with Josh Thomason and John McCarthy. “I didn’t care what I was going through. I didn’t care what I was dealing with. I didn’t care what I was dealing with physically, mentally, emotionally. It didn’t matter to me. I was just going to jump in there and perform, perform, perform. It’s the same with Israel Adesanya, that’s why you saw so many title defenses. And I think Alexander Volkanovski expressed it that way at times. We just jump in and we just go on and …
“Now, I’m like, yeah, with all that stuff, a lot of injuries and everything I’ve been dealing with, it’s kind of caught up with me, and now I’m just trying to heal from all of that, because over time these injuries add up and your performance starts to decrease and people start to forget how good you were and how much time you put into building your career and how much you did that led to your success and they (start saying), ‘Oh, he’s not good enough.’ I mean, how disrespectful are MMA fans? ‘Oh, he’s not good enough. Oh, he can’t do it anymore. He’s not good enough.'”
Despite his losing streak, Usman has caught the attention of new welterweight champion Belal Muhammad. The two have been verbally abusive lately, with Muhammad saying he’d be open to making his first title defense against either Usman or Shavkat Rahmonov.
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